Embodiments of inventive concepts disclosed herein relate generally to antenna systems including but not limited to antenna systems for providing an intersecting fan beam.
Modern sensing and communication systems may utilize various types of antennas to provide a variety of functions, such as communication, radar, and sensing functions. For example, ultra-high frequency (UHF) and very high frequency (VHF) radio systems use directional and omnidirectional antenna arrays for data and voice communication. In another example, radar systems use antenna arrays to perform functions including but not limited to: sensing, intelligence-gathering (e.g., signals intelligence, or SIGINT), direction finding (DF), electronic countermeasure (ECM) or self-protection (ESP), electronic support (ES), electronic attack (EA) and the like. An antenna system that supports multiple, independently steered beams is desirable for military and commercial radio frequency (RF) sensor systems. Electrically large, multiple, independently steered, analog beam formers (ABF), that steer the beam of an active electronically scanned array (AESA) are challenging to implement in hardware due to the physical structure of multiple parallel banks of feed manifolds/phase shifters or ultra wide band (UWB) time delay units that are required for each beam. Electrically large, multiple, independently steered, digital beam formers (DBF) require large amounts of direct current (DC) power.